Sokartawi wrote:Tried compatibility too. Doesn't help... If just UO would run decently I'd consider going to 2k... But I'd probably miss DOS too much...
The NT command shell is more powerful than DOS's command interpreter. You also get useful features like command completion* and you can have command history without being forced to load DOSKEY.
* In NT and 2K the functionality has to be activated via registry key; XP does it by default.
2k I can tolerate, but won't run my games. XP is not fine...
Why isn't it fine? I ran it ever since it came out without problem. It is more RAM-hungry, yes, but I currently have the GUI skinning service turned off. I use a rather large amount of memory on boot, but that's because I have numerous things turned on (virus scanner, firewall, PGP, large wallpaper, etc.)
My freeserver uses about 700MB of RAM when fully spawned and when I'm logged on as well with a client. Never had a problem there, fortunately. At first win98 wouldn't start with more then 512MB, it would just go into reboot loops, but after limiting VCache it worked.
Yes, but that's the problem -- W9X cannot utilize any of the >512MB memory area for cache. Modern operating systems will aggressively cache data (Unix-style OSs in particular; Linux and MacOS X will attempt to fill your RAM with cached data) to speed up overall performance. If you start running applications it'll move free up RAM, of course.
Hmm 40MB? Maybe 2k will pass the test and work on my 486... If it doesn't require a pentiumclass CPU... What's the deal with NTFS? I never liked it, it won't get recognized in DOS, so that's why everything here, even the XP machines I don't own, all use FAT32. Works perfectly. I've heard rumours that it won't work with disks larger then 30MB, but that's a load of bullshit. The 486 uses a 80GB harddrive with a single partition and still works fine for several years now, even when 60GB+ is filled up. I don't think I need to say more.
Windows 2000 on a 486 is pain. Hell, Windows 95 on a 486 wasn't too fun (I ran it for a short while on in i80486DX/33 w/ 32MB RAM).
The advantages of NTFS are numerous. Firstly, it is a journaled file system (in that it writes all operations in a journal). If the power suddenly goes out, it can reconstruct data from that journal on-the-fly. FAT is incapable of doing that and chkdsk/scandisk cannot always recover information; and if it does it is often written as binary data in incomprehensible files. Secondly, it has a more efficient file structure (esp. useful for very small files, which can be stored in the Master File Table). For all operations save one (I think creation) it is faster than FAT as well. For security purposes, it has Access Control Lists so you can decide who or what may access something. It also supports filesystem-level encryption and compression. Also, the cluster size may be specifically chosen in NTFS for any reasonably-sized volume while FAT32 choses for you.
FAT has a few advantages. It is simple to implement and its structure lends itself well to flash memory devices (where it is widely used). It is also readable by virtually all major operating systems (Linux, MacOS, Windows, etc.) so it has its uses as a scratch drive when multi-booting.
In an effort to force Windows users to stop using FAT32 as their main filesystem, Windows XP artificially limits you to a 32GB FAT32 partition with Microsoft's tools (third-party ones can create them up to the FAT32 size limit).
Half-Life 2 is all XSI. Some Ubisoft game whos title I can't remember off the top of my head is all XSI. XSI can do games just as well as most other 3d programs.
. The journal system is indeed handy in case of a crash, but so far whenever something crashed the data recovery happened in DOS so... The filesystem being more friendly for small files is interesting as well, the freeserver I have depends on a huge amount of tiny uncompiled C# scripts, starting or backuping the thing is hell.